More pre-school children will now have the opportunity to experience how the Chinese language comes alive through visits to the River Safari. This year, the Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning (CPCLL) is working with Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) to expand the Wow Wild Learn programme, which comprises a series of activities for pre-school children and training workshops for pre-school Chinese language teachers.
2. The programme aims to bring learning beyond the classroom through fun and interactive experiential activities at the River Safari that will help make Chinese language learning come alive for pre-school children. Due to an overwhelming response in its pilot phase, Wow Wild Learn has been extended to another 20 pre-schools, and CPCLL aims to reach out to 400 teachers and 3,000 pre-school children as well as their parents by the end of this year.
3. In support of the programme, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ms Low Yen Ling said, “It is important for parents, educators and the community to co-create a conducive environment for the learning of Mother Tongue Languages. Young children should be encouraged to use their Mother Tongue in their daily lives. Through an interactive approach, our children would be able to appreciate the beauty of their Mother Tongue while having fun. Through such initiatives, we hope to nurture in our children a love for the language from young.”
4. Ms May Lok, Director of Education, Wildlife Reserves Singapore, said, “Helping children improve their Mother Tongue has always been a key objective for educators in Singapore, and we have mirrored such efforts by producing bilingual supplementary books, and putting up multi-lingual educational interpretive. The Wow Wild Learn programme presents a new and exciting opportunity to bring the Chinese language to life in our wildlife environment and we are honoured to be working with the Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning and teachers from 80 pre-schools to make learning enjoyable for their students.”
5. Application details will be released at the end of October 2017, and all participating pre-school centres will also receive subsidised funding when they participate in the programme. Please refer to the Annex for more details on the programme.